Plone Eastern Europe

by Balazs Ree — last modified Mar 09, 2009 08:22 AM
The launch of the Plone EasternEurope user group reflects the growing interest for open source software worldwide. This user group will focus on the former East European block. It aims to regroup experts facing similar challenges and opportunities. By enabling cross-border collaboration it will foster the creation of innovative services and support the development of local economies.

 

The objectives of the user group are to encourage collaboration on technical issues, coding projects, business development and marketing. Plone EasternEurope is open to all people located in any Eastern European country including the Russian Federation, and the Transcaucasian and Central Asian countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

How to join Plone EasternEurope?

We invite all Plone developers from companies, Governments, non-profits and individuals to join and contribute.

Visit: http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-easterneurope to sign up to the mailing list, submit Plone events in your area and to list reference sites.

First Plone Conference in Eastern Europe

This year, the Plone Conference will take place in Budapest, Hungary, which is, easily accessible from the region. It will offer an opportunity to connect people and grow the community. The conference participation grants offered by the Open Society Institute (OSI) will enable to fund the registration fee and part of the traveling costs for a number of conference attendees from Eastern Europe, which helps participants that otherwise could not attend the event for financial reasons.

More information will soon be available on plone.org: http://plone.org/events/conferences/2009

A user group built on proven methodologies and practices

Plone EasternEurope user group organization will be modeled on a similar venture-taking place in the Americas and AsiaPacific:

  • Plone ConoSur is the international user group focusing on Spanish speaking experts. This successful group actually counts on participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
  • Plone AsiaPacific open to all the Asian Pacific countries  and currently reaching experts from South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.

 

Global strategy and support

Zea Partners a non-profit international open source business network and its member companies actively support the launch of regional users groups. This kind of international collaboration being at the base of the open source ecosystem growth. Zea Partners is also in close interaction with Researchers exploring the use of FOSS as a economic development tool. In particular FLOSSInclude

a project investigating how to "increase the deployment, development and societal impact of FOSS in across the world".